How Legit Is It All?

How Much is Real and How Much is Made Up? Of course a lot of it is a Scam – but the fact is that the best reality TV isn’t entirely fake either. For a scene to work there’s got to be a grain of truth about what’s happening. But what the program makers tend to do is inflate it dramatically to make it work on-screen.

So for example, an argument will work best when two people have a real reason to be angry with one another – and the program makers will fan the flames. They’ll keep a rumour mill going; they’ll say: “Do you know what so-and-so was up to last night?”

And if there’s a showdown about to take place, they’ll keep the couple apart until they can capture it on camera, because they want that rawness, that –Reality-. They might even keep them holed up in a separate hotel and take away their mobile phones, until they can unleash them on set.

On top of this is the fact that hundreds of hours of filming can go into just one show. There might be seven or eight days of shooting for just one episode. So, of course, it’s all blown up! It’s all over-sensationalised, because real life isn’t like that – real life pans out slowly, at a much more even pace.

And the way ‘Stars’ look is all heavily doctored too. If they’re filming a dinner scene, for example, there will be several breaks for people to redo their hair and reapply their lipstick. And if you see a Reality TV Star ‘fall out of a bed’, you can bet your life the camera team will have spent two hours setting up, and the star will have spent at least an hour on her make-up, before the opening shot.